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Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Except during nights.
Of course the same people would be arguing that oil and gas are the way to go.
Nuclear power offers the advantage of massive energy production on a small area of land, giving it a high W/skm rate. The ideal solution probably lies in the intelligent combination of several powering solutions depending on the zone type, energy demand and area coverage...
Yeah, and what about coal? Fossil fuels are still by far the cheapest ways of getting / storing energy. (I recommend reading "Physics for future presidents", which lists and explains the reasons for our "love" of oil/gas/coal).
I'm not arguing that we should use coal, but rather that a free market is inherently not (always) in line with protecting the environment. Sure, in the long run fossil fuels will become more expensive and "green energy" more affordable. But in the meantime, the government has to make sure that the industry doesn't destroy the environment. International treaties (Copenhagen, I'm looking at you) would have been a first step.
Utter bunk. See http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by-new-york-times-on.html
The plants in the US are ancient one-off designs. Small wonder they don't compare well.
TCAP-Abort
I'm sure that the amount of regulation in plant creation, "green" subsidies for solar and "politically correct" as opposed to "environmentally correct" disposal of waste serves to distort the true price of these sources.
Besides, anyone who has played sim city knows that nuclear is much cheaper.
"Fantastic for those who live in sunny states."
Yeah, it would be handy if there was some way of moving electricity from one place to another. Some sort of national grid service where power can be routed from the place it is being produced to the place it is required. I'm sure someone is working on something like that...
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
why the citizen must be subjected to teraherz imaging, loss of privacy, a bureaucracy that in the name of national security can stop whatever investigation, the expenses for armies going around the world to fight terrorism, while the industrial complex can build plants that pose an incredibly high national security risk with government subsidies right at home.
I have nothing against nuclear if the cost per kWh includes all the expenses for insuring, securing the venture from all likely dangers and dealing with nuclear waste while it is still radioactive/toxic. It currently doesn't. Solar has ALWAYS been better than nuclear because you don't have to guard used panels for thousands (millions? billions?) of years. Nuclear just put us into more debt.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I just had a reactor fitted to the south side of my roof aswell!
That is true, however a worldwide power grid would be incrediblly expensive to install. Joining america to eurasia would require either long undersea runs or long runs through inhospitable places like sibera.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations
Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can compare Solar to Nuclear.
Where is it cheaper? Cheaper than nuclear in the north of England, or just in the southern United States?
Hydro dams or wave power, possibly cheaper than nuclear near Manchester. Solar... not so much.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
There are already power lines in Siberia. There are even oil pipelines there.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
So do alkaline batteries, but both are very inefficient and very, very expensive when all the costs over the lifecycle of the mass used in the product are counted.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
That is true, however a worldwide power grid would be incrediblly expensive to install. Joining america to eurasia would require either long undersea runs or long runs through inhospitable places like sibera.
If we keep up with global warming it might be tropical
What is its price compared to uranium?
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Fantastic for those who live in sunny states. A lot less great for those of us who don't.
So what? You can at least use it in sunny states then. Just because you have found some place on the map where solar is not practical doesn't mean that the whole idea of solar energy shouldn't be ignored for the rest of the world. It is like saying that solar power is useless because the Amish don't need electricity.
You build whatever is practical for a given location. If their calculations are true, this just eliminates one factor that was against solar power previously. Simple really.
"There is always day somewhere."
A lovely sounding line but try actually doing the math.
Unless you have a superconducting grid you lose massive amounts of power in transmission over long distances.
Try powering something off panels thirteen thousand miles away and you'll lose most of the energy in the lines.
And if they do build a superconducting grid the issue becomes that of keeping thirteen thousand miles of superconducting cable cools to the temperature of liquid nitrogen.
If your cable goes underwater in the sea you'll lose a shitload of energy. (magnetic field, conductor etc)
And don't forget that these superconducting grids will be dangerous as hell, if you're pushing enough current through a cable to power north america and any part of the cooling system fails the resistance goes from zero to anything non-zero and your superconducting cable explodes extremely violently.
It's always day somewhere.
unfortunately sometimes that place is in the middle of the pacific and your hundreds of thousands of square miles of solar panels along with the explosive cables would have to be on rafts capable of surviving whatever tropical storms come their way.
You know, no matter how many times you lie about it, you're not going to change what's true. Not only is it not true that the "follow up costs" are ignored, but they're actually overestimated due to the current policy of not reprocessing fuel. Change that, and electricity becomes even cheaper than the current calculations show.
Simple rebuke of the silly claims in NYT here http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by-new-york-times-on.html
If solar would really be cheaper than nuclear, why would the governments (in the EU) or the federal government / states (in the USA) need to subsidize solar deployments and consumption?
Slashdot editors failed once again to keep their brains on. Or maybe they knew the post is ridiculous, but they just succumbed to tabloidization: say something ridiculous in the first place then wait for the masses to take the bait and grow the advertising income.
In that case, Slashdot, please take into consideration the following possible posts:
Windows is safer than Unix.
Solar is cheaper than oil.
All Jews are actually Germans.
All Germans are actually French.
All Arabs use Unix.
Some French sell oil to the Arabs (especially at night, when solar is not working).
Vi is better than Emacs
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
No worries.
Using their regulatory powers, the feds can jack up the cost of anything to as high as needed in order to make an argument for politically correct power generation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Waste disposal is a made up problem. That "waste" is very useful. Reprocessing it recovers almost all of the original fissionable mass, and the other products have medical and scientific applications. The remaining low-level crap can be glassified and dropped into a Yucca Mountain like storage depot (except that people's ignorance regarding nuclear waste and radioactivity makes them panic about that).
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Absolutely wrong.
This study does the opposite, in fact it builds in the gigantic subsidies for solar, and disregards the same for nuclear. Further, the replacement costs and long-term costs of nuclear are well known, this 'study' disregards that for solar.
Finally, this 'study' disregards any storage costs for solar, intermittance, or transport costs for the voltage.
Basically, solar has a strong potential for arid, sunny climates.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the Western World doesn't live in deserts, and power transmission isn't free.
-Styopa
Well insurance companies won't insure Nuclear Power. That is the purpose of the Price-Anderson act, to limit liability so investors would put money into Nuclear power. It was originally set to expire in 1967 once the industry had proved itself safe. Evidently it hasn't. The continued existence of the Price-Anderson act illustrates that professional risk assessors consider the risks involved in the Nuclear Industry too high to be financially viable, so the federal government stepped in with a remedy. The Nuclear industry would not be able to exist without the protections the P-A act afford as no sane investor would expose themselves to that level of liability.
Actuaries and Risk Assessors are professionals in the insurance industry and their assessment of the Nuclear Industry is that they won't insure it without the Price-Anderson Act. They're not 'against' Nuclear power, they're just paid to asses the risks, professionally.
Speaking of subsidies the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies this round to 2021 and re-authorised the Price-Anderson Act to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money and closer to a trillion dollars if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose from a single accident.
Solar power doesn't require such a construct to be viable, or to exist. So let's not go waving the Fraud word around because the real fraud perpetrated is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Very well indeed. After all, you can't use the land around the nuke power plant for anything useful, but you CAN use the land between solar panels quite well, and if this land use paid for the land before, you don't have to pay for the land now with SPV.
It sounds like you're making the mistake of believing the level of technology we have today is the limit to human innovation.
The problem I have with that kind of thinking is that it's been proved wrong consistently through history.
The "molten salt" approach we're talking about is almost certainly just a step in a long curve of technological advance. You build one and the next guy finds a better, cheaper way. Then someone else comes along with something more effective than salt.
I'm not saying you're guilty of this, but I hear constantly from certain people the notion that we shouldn't consider solar energy because the technology for solar energy is somehow insufficient, assuming that unlike every area of human endeavor, there won't be further advances.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can compare Solar to Nuclear."
Which is precisely why no nuclear power plants are being built in the US. Utilities don't need large amounts of new power all at once. They need smaller amounts over time. Solar and wind are great at supplying this incremental demand.
The utilities learned the hard way about the unreliability of future power generation predications. This led to the building off and default off many nuclear power plants in the past. If they actually need large amounts of power generating capacity they will build coal or natural gas plants because they take less time and are more economical.
That's funny. They didn't think that the risks of Deepwater Horizon were too big.